Forest and agrarian transition, smallholder practices and the new forms of land governance: Building research

General

Questions of governance and access to resources have become even more important with new and emerging forms of land control in the global South. These have implications for smallholder livelihoods and forest futures. The analytical approaches used to deal with the processes of deforestation and agricultural changes, i.e. forest and agrarian transition models, are ill equipped to explain the complex interaction of forest conservation initiatives and local smallholding practices. There is a need to better understand the way new forms of land governance, such as REDD+, unfold locally and what effects they have on smallholders’ lifeworlds. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from SLU (Sweden), Nepal, and Brazil are working on these issues through country specific cases and cross-country comparisons. This project intends to strengthen the ongoing collaboration and also draw in Peruvian colleagues to deepen the comparative analysis. The collaboration among the researchers is expected to provide a solid ground for contextually informed relational analysis, producing high quality scientific outputs and cutting edge questions for future research. The proposed activities include analytical workshops, joint field work, stakeholder workshops and seminars in three countries, and will provide more space for networking and collaboration. We also plan to develop further research applications and lay groundwork for writing a book.